Detecting conflicts by using the Calendar

BMC Helix ITSM detects collisions between change requests and helps you to take actions to manage and resolve the potentially harmful conflicts between these change requests.

The collision detection is enabled by default and can be disabled if required. For more information about disabling the collisions, see Enabling-and-configuring-the-calendar.

Before you begin

To access collision management functionality, you must have the required permissions. For more information, see Roles-and-permissions-in-Change-Management.

Best practice
We recommend that you run an impact analysis to detect and relate additional CIs to a change request before you try to detect collisions. For more information, see Relating-items-to-the-change-request.

To detect collisions and take action on them

The Calendar detects collisions after services or CIs are related to a change request, and the scheduled dates have been specified. Potential collisions are displayed when you are creating or updating the change request and after you save the change request.

The following video (2:28) describes the process of detecting collisions and taking action on them:

Disclaimer

Although the concepts and procedures presented in this video are correct, the user interfaces shown are not current.

https://youtu.be/Sj8-gByGdKI

When you create a change request, after you enter values for the scheduled start and end dates, but before you save the change request, the list of collisions (if any) for services or related CIs are displayed when you click on Check collisions at the bottom of the screen.

In the Change collisions window, you can see the Change ID, Summary, CI Name, Status, and the change coordinator name. Click the Send an email to all change coordinators with conflicting CRQs link to contact the change coordinators by email, in case you need to discuss schedules and priorities.

After you save the change request, if the collision is not resolved, the system warns you again about potential collisions by displaying an alert banner at the top of the change request details. To resolve the collisions, click Show more to display the Change collision window.

To change the status of the collisions, select the impacted Change ID or all the Change IDs and select the required option from the Mark selected list.

In the Change collisions window, click Calendar to view the collisions in a flexible calendar view that displays collisions in the current day, week, or month. You can click to view the list of collision tickets in a side bar. The number of collisions are mentioned next to the pills for each collision ticket. You can drag a ticket to adjust the start and end dates of the ticket directly in the Calendar. You can also drag and drop a ticket to new dates in the Calendar.

The Business Events and Outages are also shown in the Calendar along with the collisions. You can use the filter in the calendar to show the relevant Business Event, Outage or Change.

Important

Collision statuses and rationales for previously saved dates are maintained in the system and become visible if you save the change request with the same dates again.

For more information about using collision statuses as a change manager or change coordinator, see Detecting-collisions-between-change-requests.

How collision statuses are stored

A single collision status record is shared by both the current change request and the change request that is in collision. If one person performs an action on the collision from either change request, the status and rationale (if any) are visible in both change requests. You can provide a rationale when you update the collision status.

Instructions for classic interfaces

View instructions for classic Smart IT

Smart IT detects collisions after CIs have been related to a change request and scheduled dates have been specified. Potential collisions are shown when you are creating or updating the change request, but you can take action on the collisions only after the change request has been saved in the system.

In the universal client, collisions are also displayed in a flexible calendar that allows you to display collisions in the current day, week, or month, or in a book view that spans several days. You can also apply filters to show only the collisions you want, based on criteria such as the company, status, service CI, and so on. Detected (active) collisions are outlined in red. The calendar also includes an option to show related events, such as CI outages.

For more information about using collision statuses as a change manager or change coordinator, see Detecting-collisions-between-change-requests.

View instructions for Mid Tier

You have an indication for events for which a collision is detected. This collision indicator is displayed on the Calendar in the Calendar and Timeline views. When you click the event, all the events that collide with the selected one are highlighted in solid shaded blocks.

To detect collisions

You must select the Auto-collision option in the Calendar administrator preferences to enable this feature. For more information, see Enabling-and-configuring-the-calendar.

You can view the colliding changes and make a decision about rescheduling any of the colliding events. You can resolve the collision by rescheduling the events from within the Calendar in either of the following ways:

Using the drag-and-drop feature
Selecting the Edit Event option from the right-click menu options

If there are no more collisions after you reschedule the colliding event, the collision indicator is no longer displayed for that record. However, other colliding events still contain the collision indicator. To refresh the collision indicator for colliding changes, click the Refresh icon on the Calendar console.

Important

If the new schedule collides with other events, the collision indicator is still displayed and the colliding events are highlighted in solid shaded blocks.

For Release Management, if the manifest of two releases include changes that collide, a collision indicator is displayed for the two release records. To refresh the collision indicator for colliding changes, click the Refresh icon on the Calendar console.